Month: January 2013

We’re walking by the river Nith in Dumfries when Jack starts digging in some bush at the base of a tree. He was intent so I knew he smelled an animal, and thinking about the floods on Sunday, I thought perhaps a rat or other river creature.

Dumfries in flood

He must have dug for about 10 minutes or so, on a 5 m leash as I watched buses go by, watched a Heron on the river and basically let him have his fun. Suddenly a rat zoomed out from the base of the tree and scurried off along the wall and behind a litter bin. As Jack was on his leash I had to run to let him keep up.

But when we got to the bin there was no sign of it. We walked along the path a few feet and I tried to get Jack interested in another bush at the base of another tree, thinking it may have taken refuge there, but he wasn’t having it. He wanted to be back at the bin. So we went back and I pulled it out and leaned it over and showed him there was no rat behind it. Suddenly, up it pops on the inside of the bin, clinging to the side of the metal insert and glaring at me. The bin had gaps underneath so the sneaky creature managed to get in one and go inside the bin itself and of course, to utter safety.

So I’m trying to convince Jack he has no chance when the stupid rat, seeing him standing up and peering through the litter box, runs back down the bin and out the hole in the bottom and runs off up the path again! Madness, suicide, Jack was on it like a car bonnet! lol

For some unknown reason he didn’t do his normal ‘bite and shake’ kill maneouver, where he bites them hard round the neck and shakes them to snap their neck. No, he bit it to death. Simply stood there biting it hard til it stopped flopping. I’ve never seen him do that before.

There was quite a lot of blood and looking at the splatter I’m sure it’s Jack’s. I suspected it had managed to bite his dewlap or nose, so we went straight back to the van where I cleaned him off, and remembered there was a vet about 5 minutes walk away. However when I got him cleaned up there wasn’t a mark on him, so I will keep an eye just in case infection starts, but it seems he got off with it.

Here’s an interesting fact:In the US last year, cats killed approximately 1.6 Billion small mammals. It’s actually becoming a problem as so many little things are being killed that numbers are down. The massive number is said to be due to the increase in domestic cat ownership. I hope most of those are rats 🙂

As some may notice I’m currently in the process of updating this blog. It lay dormant for some considerable time, that was obviously my fault, but not helped by incredibly poor support from Heart Internet over an extended period of time. The story about them and about how I had to call in ‘the law’ over their practices will be covered in another post eventually.

That other post is written in a notepad, along with hundreds of other notes about posts I should have made at the time. A real paper notepad, not an electronic one. I’ll get them all filled in to cover the last 6 years, and add new ones as I go, but this is going to take time.

So, first priority is to go back and check old posts. This is to make sure any photos on them are displaying, the titles are correct, any links are valid, as many tags as I can think of are entered for them and that locations are added as appropriate, for the Google map widget. Yes, the one that isn’t working at present lol I’ll be taking a hammer to it later and fixing it.

Then when that’s complete I’ll be adding posts retrospectively from my notes, so expect to see some appearing from right back in 2006!

Finally, there is already a link to my main photosite, but I’ll be adding more links once the reorganisation of that site is complete. That’s when you will be able to see many photos of a place I visited instead of just one. They’ll also be of high quality and large size for comfortable viewing and remember, any photo you see on my site can be bought from my main site image-ination. 🙂

I took Jack out and we walked down to the market in Dumfries, which only has 2 stalls and was deserted apart from the stall holders. Turns out the man running the hardware stall comes from Sherburn, very near where I was born. He didn’t have a 70mm hole drill though so I still can’t fit the Gaslow valve.

Never mind we left there and had a very cold but enjoyable walk along the river til it was lunchtime, but as we returned to the van the rain started and it slowly washed away all the snow.

Never mind, tomorrow I’ll find that camper accessory shop I passed on the way in, get some water pipe, heating flue and various other bits and bobs and then head for Whithorn, which a friend recommended as being a nice place.

You may have noticed I have changed the theme. I got the old one from ThemeForest, but it doesn’t work, and when I contacted the author, he basically told me that he is not required to give support, so tough. Here’s his email:

Hello,

I’m sorry but all sales are final. I am also not required to support as stated in Themeforest terms and conditions. I also do not reply to emails generally. I hope this information helped.

Have a good day,

Zomb Studios

ThemeForest when I emailed them stated that $40 is not that much, so they don’t bother asking authors to support their work.

It’s all a bit of a scam methinks, so if you’re looking for a theme to use, perhaps ThemeForest and ZomBStudios are not the places to go.

**Updated: ThemeForest offered me a refund on the grounds that the theme was indeed faulty and not as described. Let’s see if it comes through.